My personal ranking would be this:
1) Geoffrey Beevers - Basically, just as they had rehabilitated the Sixth and, especially, the Eighth Doctor as proper Doctors each, Big Finish managed to make Beevers the most unique and different of all the Masters. He's the creepiest, most menacing of all the Masters, without an ounce of camp, instead his devilish delight coming off as the rare genuine moment of pleasure and enjoyment out of a physically miserable experience. As The Nth Doctor mentioned, he's plays that incarnation in various points of his life - before Ainley, after Ainley but before Roberts, and after Roberts certainly (indeed, this incarnation met his regenerated just last year, in the Ravenous box-sets!), but whenever and whichever Master he was, he's always been a frickin' delight. I hope he does more, especially with the Fourth Doctor, to whom he's become his very own Delgado (much to my delight). Bottom line, when every single Master since Delgado emulated or imitated him, Beevers didn't. Not even in
The Keeper of Traken where he was introduced! And for that, he's the best.
2) Roger Delgado - With the Doctor, its rare that the original would be the best or close to it. Its either the Fourth of the Seventh/Tenth/Eleventh/whatever. But with the Master its the opposite. He's the first and most conscise incarnation of the Master, and like I mentoned above, everyone else has tried to emulate him since his untimely passing. However, everyone always accentuates and frankly misinterprets his rare OTT-ness as camp, a mistake that was first done in writing, who never understood, seemingly, that the Master was at his best when he wasn't a flailing egomaniac who spouted platitudes, but when he was calmly and calculatingly sharing his thoughts with his greatest enemy. His menace and appeal has never been bettered, at least not on TV.
3) Derek Jacobi - ... althought Jacobi came close. He's the closest to emulate Delgado, and does on-screen in his brief pre-regeneration scene. Its too bad RTD didn't just keep him for the entire finale. If you can find and listen to his War Master audios, do so. They're worth listening (and WAY better than the War Doctor audios) just for him.
4) Michelle Gomez - The most disturbing Master, for me, because she actually is the only one since Beevers that has any sense of compassion and understanding of decency. Ultimately, that makes her quite interesting because she's also the only one who might end up being a nice person. The ultimate tragedy of it, of course, is that her own past wouldn't let her, and as such, she literally kills herself before she every gets to change for the better. Its a great arc, and Gomez pulls it off commendably.
5) Edward Brayshaw - A pretty great Master, for me, and a pretty different one. He's unlike the others, in that he doesn't at any point in the story try to take over the aliens' plot and do it himself, instead he posits himself as the War Chief, which you can take as either a mask-free disguise ora genuine name change, but either way, he's more cunning and less theatrically evil than the others. He's almost Machiavellian in how, as a Time Lords, he withhelds his greatet knowledge and allows himself to operate as an operative rather as the War Lord, because he knows the War Lord, where the Time Lords ever involved, would get the largest part of the blame. Indeed, he only got away it with a regeneration (or waited around before that, if you believe spin-off comic/book). Brayshaw is pretty underrated for this role, and he should be recognized for his efforts of elevating
War Games to an even better serial.
6) Alex MacQueen - Look, I know I've criticised some for their campiness, and he's definitely one of that clique... But, to me, the difference between MacQueen and, say, Dhawan, is that MacQueen does get to be deadly threatening and intimidating, his psychotic attitude a result of his excitement to see his plans to come to fruition. He's the most child-like of the Masters, but he's not less intelligent, and I love how MacQueen manages to communicate this through with his amazing voice acting. I wish we'd see him in the flesh.
7) James Dreyfus - Not a lot to say, but I did love him in
The Destination Wars, where he really does steal the scenes he's in and really does a great job at introducing the character in the Doctor Who story chronologically, being suitably menacing and also challenging the viewer/listener as to whether he's telling the truth or not. Sadly, I did not enjoy him as much in his other two stories, where he's the blandest, most flavorless incarnation ever. Indeed, I think those two he recorded
before TDW, which would explain a lot. Still, he did a good job in that one, and I place him high for that alone.
8) Anthony Ainley - Possibly the most unfortunate case of an actor playing the Master, because everyone on the creative side sans Ainley almost never really let him play the Master close to what Delgado portrayed, instead insisting him playing him as what they
remembered or
misremembered from Delgado. Most of his appearences consisted of annoying clownish outfits, boring platitudes about destroying the world/planet/universe/galaxy/reality and just all around crackling and laughing as if to signify how terrifying and psychotic he is, instead of showing it. That being said, he had his moments, and in my mind his performances in
Survival,
The Five Doctors,
The Ultimate Foe, Planet of Fire and
Logopolis are pretty good, and definitely closer to what Ainley wanted to do with the Master throughout the years. Its unforunate he'd turned down BF, as I'm sure they'd have tailored the scripts to his personal interest. Ah, well.
9) John Simm - We all know the story. He pretty much overracted and chewed the whole scenery in series 3, and Moffat "fixed" him for his return crossover with Missy. I think we ALL agree to that. But I will contend he managed to convey a slightly more mannered turn in
End of Time despite, well, the Master race bits. His one-on-one scenes with Tennant are stunningly acted, and unlike the platitudes the Doctor and Master exchanged in
Spyfall and
Timeless Children, their conversation there are the very crux of the Doctor's tragic affinity for the Master and the Master's equal inability to take the Doctor on his offer. Simm got some meat on that bone, and he did well with it. Its too bad that wasn't the case for his whole run as the Master, but, we'll always have
The Doctor Falls.
10) Sacha Dhawan - He's great in his quiet moments, and indeed he's pretty good for most of Part 1 of
Spyfall. However, like Ainley at his worst, he never acts as the Master, instead he overracts and grimaces through the inane material (which is not his fault, clearly), thus robbing us of any opportunity to either be threatened or intimidated by him. Indeed, he's thus far the most cartoonish Master since Eric Roberts and Simm - but both got a better chance thanks to BF. Will Dhawan get that opportunity. I hope he does before then.
11) Eric Roberts - Big Finish to the rescue, otherwise he'd be dead last. "Dressed for the occasion"? No thanks! Thankfully, he was allowed to round the character up considerably in the River Song sixth season set and in the Ravenous 4 box-set, but there's no escaping that this Master was simply an uninteresting aspect of the TV Movie.
12) Peter Pratt - Yeah, he's pretty bad. He just yells and overracts at every turn, never allowing the viewer to be taken in with his condition. In fact, he's easily the worst aspect of The Deadly Assassin, an otherwise stone-cold classic. Luckily, Beevers had done a reading of that very story's novelisation, and I was able to replace Pratt with Beevers' voice for that serial in my own fan-edit (which changed absolutely nothing else otherwise), and let me tell you it was (and is) a superior experience - indeed, the humor in Holmes' insults that he spouts comes off more now. Wish I could share it with you, but YT doesn't like that idea.
